Azure Free Account

Description

Amber Bhargava joins Scott Hanselman to discuss the new Azure free account. The new Azure free account provides Azure customers US $200 credit for first 30 days to experiment with a combination of services. Now it also includes 12-months of popular free services and 25+ always free services to learn and explore Azure further.

@No Credit Card: Unfortunately, we don't support other forms of identity at the moment. However, we use credit card only to verify your identity and don't charge your credit card unless you convert to a PAYG subscription.

I think you guys have got this wrong. I (as a developer who just wants to learn/evaluate Azure) am never going to pay for the paid services out of my credit card when I choose to use it -- my employer is.

This will keep a lot of developers from trying Azure. Is a mobile phone number not enough to validate identity?

@amberb Can you guys assure that I won't be charged until I explicitly give permission? Because right now I clicked on the Azure shell after signing up an got a scary message saying "This will create a new storage account for you and this will incur a small monthly cost."

@DevInfamous - You card cannot be charged in the first 30 days after you sign up for a free account. Any charges in that first 30 days are deducted from the $200 credit. After 30 days, you will have to upgrade your account to a pay-as-you-go account to remove the $0 spending limit before anything will charge to your card. See Azure Free Account FAQ.

I keep getting charged for the so-called free services even though I create them from the Free Services part of the portal. The account is less than 12 months old and having to create a ticket to get refunded is tiresome.